Road Trip Music: South Carolina & Georgia

The deep south is a varied as the turn of a kaleidoscope, in landscape, in people, in accents, in food, and in music. South Carolina native Dulcie Taylor gets at all that in several ways on her album Mirrors & Windows. She offers songs with elements of blues, folk, r&b, and rock, and makes it all work well. The subjects are conversational and thought provoking. Especially check out one of the folk tinged stories, Blackberry Winter, a fine marriage of melody and lyric.

Josh Turner is a rising country star, who got his start singing in church in Hanna, South Carolina. His breakthrough hit to the country charts was a sort of twenty first century gospel song he thought nobody would ever want to hear, called Long Black Train. Give a listen.


Bernice Johnson Reagon has been an activist, a college professor, a museum curator, an author, and the founder of the much awarded singing group Sweet Honey in the Rock. She got her start, though, singing first in her church and then during the civil rights days of western Georgia. and on Give Your Hands to Struggle she brings in parts of both those things.

These are sound tracks for your road trip through South Carolina and Georgia.

This is part of The Great American Road Trip, in which I’m partnering up with A Traveler’s Library to add musical ideas to the book and film suggestions for journeys through the regions of the United States which you’ll find there.
For more about the road trip (and a look at some great road songs) see Great American Road Trip: Music begins

you may also want to see
Music Road: Road trip music in the district: Washington DC

Music Road: easter eve: rani arbo & daisy mayhem: house be blessed

a selection of recommended songwriter cds